Utah's NG911 GIS Roadmap

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As the State of Utah moves closer to NG911, GIS data providers will soon be required to adhere to national standards set forth by the NENA and the UCA 911 Division(section 6 of ref 1). It can be daunting navigating these standards and best practice documents, so the intent of this article is to demystify the relevant information and lay out a road map of where we are going.

This post is focused on GIS as it relates to NG911 Core Services and the SI. These are the services needed to process a call on the ESINet(ref 9). For GIS, this equates to address validation and 911 call routing. Essentially, these are the operations that take place before the call is received at the appropriate PSAP. As a result, NENA has established standards to ensure that these operations can be carried out flawlessly. Failing to comply with these standards could ultimately result in misrouted 911 calls (section 2.2 of ref 5 and section 2 of ref 4).

Now if you’re not familiar with this topic, all these acronyms might sound like mumbo jumbo, and if that’s the case, don’t worry (and also, take a look at the Recommended Reading and References section below). We’ll make it easy for you! The big takeaway is this: accuracy and consistency of GIS data in NG911 systems are extremely critical.

Standards and Best Practices

Required Datasets

Service area boundaries

PSAP boundaries

Emergency service boundaries (e.g., law, fire, and EMS)

Provisioning boundaries (i.e., boundaries that define the extent of the data provider’s responsibility)

NG911 GIS Roadmap

Near-Term

Data validation and cleanup are the next, most logical steps for GIS readiness. These are often considered the first steps in NG911 transition. At the moment, AGRC is focused on facilitating two specific data validation checks, both mentioned in the previous Data Requirements section of this page:

ALI/MSAG and GIS

The UCA 911 Division is in the process of obtaining statewide ALI and MSAG data for the purpose of GIS data synchronizing. AGRC will geocode the ALI database against the GIS data to ensure that all valid addresses in the phone carrier’s database can be located/validated in the GIS data (section 6 of ref 1). A similar process will need to happen with the MSAG data. All valid addresses in the ALI database must have a corresponding site/structure address point in the GIS data.

AGRC will then work with the data providers to resolve any valid discrepancies.

Address Component Cross-Check

NG911 Core Services state that site/structure address points and road centerlines must be consistent. In other words: unless intended, each site/structure address point should match an associated road centerline. This supports the requirement that a civic address be considered valid if it can be located within the database uniquely (section 4.8 of ref 1). Here are some common mismatch issues AGRC has found:

Provision Utah’s statewide, NG911 GIS database so it can used locally by the PSAPs (for their record keeping and dispatch systems). This would eliminate data duplication and ultimately provide all 911 users with the best possible data. This concept is in line with the UCA 911 Division promotion of a consistent 911 service across the state (sections 5.3 and 6 of ref 1).

What Can You Do Now?

If you are a 911 GIS data provider, it’s in your best interest to begin validating and provisioning your data as soon as possible. In the coming months, AGRC will geocode the ALI database and begin working with the data providers to resolve missing addresses.

At the moment, the most effective thing you can do is to resolve unintended discrepancies between site/structure address points and road centerlines. To facilitate this effort, AGRC has created a custom process to perform these validation checks and then output the needed discrepancy reports for the 911 data providers. Get involved now by visiting the project’s homepage.

It’s also in your best interest to view the current draft version of Utah’s statewide NG911 GIS database. In particular, it is highly recommended that you validate your jurisdiction’s PSAP, fire, law, and/or EMS boundaries, ensuring that they are correctly represented. AGRC will continue to push monthly updates and modifications into this database in hope that 911 data providers will view the data and help us resolve unintended discrepancies.

Keep in mind:

NG911 implementation won’t happen overnight: there will be a hybrid GIS/MSAG (GeoMSAG) approach at first.

Recommended Reading and References

The UCA 911 Division and NENA are two valuable sources for further reading on NG911. Below are a few recommended starting points for learning more about NG911 and how it affects us as GIS professionals. (These sources are in no specific order; the numbering is related to the references previously listed throughout this article.)